The other night I was flicking through channels and came across the show Extreme Couponing which I normally don’t watch but this one caught my eye. They were featuring a 14 year old girl that loves couponing and has her family basement fully stocked as if it was a super market back room.

The segment that saw was very interesting as her family went along with her and they were proud and in this day and age that is a good thing. While her budget is usually around $100, this time around they were doing their shopping for the summer season while she had off for summer break. It was very interesting to watch her shop and research everything that had a coupon. She had 200+ coupons for $1 off and they were on sale for 99 cents. While she didn’t get a penny back she did drive the cashier crazy. Actually the cashier was very nice even though she had to enter a code for the coupon to work over 200 times.

I am sure the store that she shopped in was doing double coupons as her total was $900 + and her bill came all the way down to I think was $100. I was quite impressed and said to myself she is going to make someone a good wife someday. This girl will save a ton of money over her lifetime on products she will be buying anyway.

While my opinion of Extreme Couponing may not change it was refreshing to watch this young girl work it very well with coupons and not buying stuff on impulse.

Coupons are everywhere, and for practically everything. You’d be surprised what you can find coupons for! Here’s a short list:

1) Arts and Crafts: You can save money on the little knickknacks you use to make your own greeting cards? Or how about fabric for your own self-made dress? Yeah, you can find coupons for those.

2) Car Cleaning Supplies: Yes, you can find coupons for specialized scrubbers and cleaning chemicals for cars. You can save money on that special tire scrubber or waxing agent to keep your car looking its best.

3) Dating: No, I don’t mean coupons for food for dates. I mean coupons for saving money on trying to find a date. There are plenty of portals for trying to find someone who will be a good fit for you, and the vast majority of them cost money. Some of them offer discount coupons to try to draw you to their service instead of their competitors.

4) Web Hosting: For those that want to run their own website, this is great news. Web hosting is required for running your own completely controlled website, and there is a monthly cost for doing so. A variety of top-notch web hosting companies offer hosting coupons because price can sometimes be the biggest difference between one host or another.

5) Traveling: Plane tickets are expensive, but there are coupons out there to help with it. They won’t make those tickets cheap, but they will make them less expensive. If you really need those plane tickets, you might as well save a bit of money on them.

As you can see, there are tons of unusual categories for coupons. This is only the tip of the iceberg, never assume that something you want doesn’t have a coupon that can go along with it. Search for one on coupon sites, forums, or even through a Google search just to see if you could be saving money with just a little more effort!

Just got back from Duane Reade where I cashed in a buy one get one free coupon on those new Pretzel M&M’s. I would have bought them anyway so I saved a buck and got some points also. Not that big of a deal but a dollar here and there adds up. I also picked up some cookies that are usually $5 each on sale that were 2 for $5 so it was a good thing going to Duane Reade today.

Went shopping for cat food yesterday and saved a few dollars with coupons from the P&G Brandsaver and by joining the Petco PetPals program. We got $5 off each bag of food with the PetPals membership and had two $1 off coupon. The bags were 31.99 each and we got them for $25.99 each.

We also bought an automatic liter box that had a $40 off for petpal members. So our overall savings was $52 on items we would have bought anyway. I know there is cheaper cat food and we could save more money but our cats need the hairball catfood for their health.

Went shopping at Duane Reade today and picked up a few items. We needed FeBreeze and were waiting for them to go on sale. With these coupons were buy one and get another type of febreeze for free aas long as it was under $3.49. So we bought 2 since we had two coupons and got two for free. Four bottle for what we paid for two bottles. We also picked up some Bounty paper towels and got $1 off each roll.